The water from swimming pools could have been used to fight the fire. The Pacific Ocean had water that could have been used to put out flames.
Interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva sent a November 12 letter to all members of the LAFD, as he turned over the helm to new Fire Chief Jaime Moore. In the letter (below) he wrote, “The Palisades Fire left an enduring mark on our community, and I am immensely proud to have led this department through such a pivotal time. I am deeply grateful to the courageously talented and dedicated firefighters and staff who, each day demonstrate remarkable service to the City.”FC – THANK YOU LAFD_1 (1)
In response to the letter, Palisades resident Hank Wright wrote to LAFD “I agree with the statement ‘The Palisades Fire left an enduring mark on our community…’
“I wish LAFD had acted rather than sitting on the beach at Incident Command. As a direct result of their lack of action, I lost my home of 32 years along with every physical possession from 67 years of my time on this planet.
“It is my hope that in the future nobody has to endure the complete systemic failure of the organizations across the board we bought and paid for to protect us from a preventable conflagration that will go down as the most expensive United States civil disaster. Although there was effort to fight, overall the level of inaction was staggering. I can’t unexperience what I filmed click here.
“With all due respect to you, I hope your organization finds the strength to address the problems that led to firefighting equipment one mile from my home with a working hydrant 10 yards away and 20,000 gallons of water even closer that were untapped while our home and every home burned like a campfire to complete ash.
“Letters like you shared may seem like they help. They don’t. They demonstrate how out of touch the organization has become.
“Celebrating victory that was an epic defeat.
“This empty rhetoric enrages a deeply injured community that would have been fully capable of saving itself if we had known how LAFD has been reduced to a flammable paper tiger by selfish out of touch bureaucrats who feel entitled to stand on the shoulders of those who built this once glorious city. “
Hank Wright’s comments and video put into words everything I have thought and felt since I first saw and heard about this fire. Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you!
My husband and I sold our beloved house of 3o+ years (next to St Matthews) in 2021 and we moved to Florida. This doesn’t erase the loss we feel at watching the entire Palisades community burn down – thanks to what I think should be called “criminal negligence,” although I’m not a lawyer. I don’t understand what happened to Los Angeles.
I grew-up in Los Angeles. When I was small, my parents’ house burned to the ground in the Bel Air Fire (1961). We moved to the Palisades. From Will Rogers, Sergei Bongart, Eames house, Cliff May and the original California ranch house, Christopher Isherwood, Henry Miller, Thomas Mann, The Beach Boys, on and on – – so much history in this little Pacific Palisades area. Gone.
Thank-you for documenting this fire and how it burned for several days while the “authorities” did effectively nothing. I am on the other side of the country now and the people I meet here seem to think that there was really no way to mitigate the fire damage thanks to wind. The lack of knowledge about the empty reservoirs, idle fire trucks etc. is galling.
I send love and my best wishes from Florida. Patty Adelmann
While watching the video by Hank Wright I found myself unable to breathe normally. It still feels so unreal yet totally real. It left me feeling saddened that many more homes and greater part of our community could have been saved. His hope and pain are palpable. Thank you for sharing.
Amen, Mr. Wright.
Amen.
Well said. I am having trouble reconciling the loss of respect I used to had with the anger I now have for our local station 69 fireman. I lived near the village in and above the alphabet streets since 1994 and would be so happy to see them having lunch at Terri’s or Morts with their fire and EMT trucks parked nearby “just in case’. Our local heroes. But that changed to confusion and later anger when they let our town burn down. I saw no active firefighting on our side of town on the 7th and none on the 8th. When we left at 3;30 pm on the 7th we saw zero fire trucks or fireman working or even driving by. At the time I thought they must all be in the highlands trying to save lives as we knew people and cars were stuck on palisades drive. But then we saw Station 69’s trucks were fully parked in the bay and the firemen were inside with their clothes stacked fireman style near the trucks. Just like any other day. A few were in the driveway. NOT firefighting. Or even trying to. We know a lot more of all the failures now but I still want to believe they truly wanted to save our home and yet the anger and betrayal I feel from seeing them just hanging out at the station is still just overwhelming. Heroes lost …
Amen! Right on the money.
Frankly, I refuse to pass by the cowards parked at station 69 in their shiny, indented 1.2 million fire trucks without flipping them the bird. It’s unseemly, but so does the ash fields surrounding their station which could so easily have been prevented. At the very least, these children should have alerted all of us that they were’t going to fight the fires so we could have rescued our valuables. And yet, they insist on giving each other “valor” awards. We need to replace all of them before we can rebuild safely.